Duality

[Jay Carpenter]

One breathless step forward was disbelief. The second was a profound dream. But no disturbance would he allow to shatter their suspension of reality. He’d grip it tight even if Natalie pulled him asunder. He would follow.

So he did.

His chest pounded with hope, for her and for the hope of her. Finally, he let his hands roam unrestrained: her back, her waist, her hips, her legs. Everything previously forbidden from even imagining. He buried himself in mounds of golden hair, inhaling her neck, tipping her chin this way and that. In return, the walls around his heart crumbled. All the things he wanted with Anna Marie but couldn’t give. All the connection with Axel or Nox but couldn’t sustain. Light but she was what he never knew he always wanted. He’d not let her go.

He would follow her. And he did.

He nestled himself around her with protective closeness, and when he let himself behold the line of her jaw and the curve of her chest, he knew he’d weather any of the storms they were about to face, even if only to keep her warm.

He guided and let himself be guided through the intoxication of finally. Of light. And love. And hope. Until never wanting it to end.

[Natalie Grey]

The soft rise and fall of Jay’s chest beneath her cheek suggested he might have fallen asleep some time later, but she didn’t tilt her chin up to check. The deep rhythm of his heart was one she didn’t want to soon forget, and such peace was a hard won luxury for her. Natalie was blunt with difficult truths, but less so with the vulnerable ones; those she even protected from herself, and this was one of them. It felt all the more fragile for its self-recognition. She’d never been the chaste sort, at least not before she’d met Aaron. But it had never felt like this.

She had little intention of allowing herself to drift off in the lingering warmth of tousled blankets, to let the seconds slip away from her despite the pleasant lull in her limbs, but she did let herself relax against him. The gift had left her now, and only a pleasant lethargy remained. Her fingers traced an idle pattern against his skin, light as breath so as not to disturb. She felt … well, she put no name to the emotions, lest they shatter the moment she put hope in them. Lessons like that left scars.

The harsh buzz of her phone was the intrusion to finally break the quiet melody. She didn’t shift immediately, though it robbed a little from the moment. Armour would rebuild when her senses returned, and it made her reluctant to acknowledge. But it might be her father finally returning that call. Or Marcus. Or worse. The world wouldn’t wait for them, after all, and she was not convinced Jay really appreciated all of the ways in which they were trapped by bad choices, despite what he’d said. 

The fresh bruises in her side gave a twinge as she moved, easily enough ignored, and her gaze swept the dereliction around them with fresh eyes, brows half raised in mild surprise as she leaned over him to reach for her phone on the side. Mussed hair tumbled down her shoulders. The sly curve of her lips suggested she was not ignorant of her shifting body or the perch of her hand, and there was a warmth in her pale gaze that might easily become rekindled. A deferred promise, for when her palm closed on the tech her expression abruptly flattened to its familiar mask. The tension softened into relief once she glanced at the screen though, the bubble protecting them from reality as yet unscathed by whatever she had anticipated. 

She paused a moment longer before she sank back in a quiet cast of contemplation. Then she passed the phone to Jay. A curious glance absorbed his reaction before she pressed her cheek against the cap of his shoulder. The kitten in Laurene’s photo message had grown considerably from the small ginger scrap swept from the battlefield. The cat was perched alert upon Ekene’s shoulder, one paw braced against the boy’s grinning cheek while the other swatted blurrily at something out of frame. The boy was caught amidst a laugh, but it was the renewed light in his eyes that struck her quiet.

She didn’t smile. Africa was a strange mix of pain and beauty to behold these days, wounds ill-healed yet stitched with fresh hope. Not everything in Sierra Leone had burned, and Natalie protected those fragile new shoots as vehemently as she denied their existence. It was a significant glimpse into her interior life and the things she held dear, not offered meekly but unusual all the same. After her rather unceremonious breakdown at the casino she’d intended to bury all evidence of those lingering burdens; the guilt, mostly. The weakness, certainly. 

But maybe Jay ought to know that not everything they touched turned to ash.

Because a thousand concerns still swarmed the horizon, waiting to swallow the sun and plunge their reality to darkness. If she convinced him to return to the Custody she doubted she would see him again, but at least he would avoid Brandon’s wrath for desertion -- as it might appear by now. She was sure she could smooth those suspicions given the traces of drug in Jay’s system, and Marcus could vouch for it too, if he’d not grown annoyed with her silence by now. The proof was there though, if she could pull all the right strings. And Moscow perhaps held resources they would need.

Persisting here sang a dangerous sort of freedom though.

She did not begrudge Jay his revenge, but its ramifications were utterly unknowable without a more comprehensive picture. Amengual had walked elite circles in Moscow; his death would send political ripples in ways she could not predict. Killing a Custody pawn, particularly a favoured one, would not go down well. But they were already damned, weren’t they?

Morbid humour stirred. A pale leg poked from the frazzled blankets, and her foot brushed the top of his. Not that he’d see it, but a smirk softened her lips; purposely distracting, but he ought to be used to the devilish tease of her by now. What future lay ahead could wait; she refused to be bowed by the weight of it, and she would protect him as long as she could. “What does it feel like for you? The power?” He posed that question to her once, and she’d never asked it in kind.

[Jay Carpenter]

Even drugged unconscious, Jay wasn’t a heavy sleeper. Okay, maybe when he was beaten to an edge of his life by Placado, he was pretty difficult to rouse. The sleep of the content, however, was just as shallow as ever before. The moment Natalie shifted, awareness descended. Even if he didn’t make much effort to do anything about it. He simply enjoyed the warmth of her back pressed against him. It was with curious acceptance that he took up the screen, wondering who would want to funnel a message through Natalie to get to him. The outcome sparked what was probably the first genuine smile since he actually snagged the yellow beast from the bushes. The boy holding onto the mid-grown kitten was happy that belied all the reasons he had to be miserable. That kitten was his undoing. Jay would have crawled over cut glass to save the creature. A salvation of the innocent. It was the kind of thing a hero would do, and if the kitten was the only thing he could save, then goddammit he was going to save the thing.

His chest sank as he released the phone back to its owner. Natalie lingered close, but Jay said nothing. What do you say to the reminder of guilt tied at their ankles? Better to drift in silence than dredge up the lies they both knew were perched on the tip of his tongue. Her question was a blessed change of topic. He remembered asking similarly of her.
“It’s like sticking your hand into a fire to grab a burning log and pluck it back out. If you’re not fast enough. Focused enough. Or strong enough, then the fire will melt the skin from your bones, and every time you seize it, it could be the last time you do.”

Even then, the power waited on the edge of consciousness. He was thrilled of its return.
“It twists inside you like you burn from within. It sears your bones to ash and fills your mouth with sand. It’s horrible. And its blissful. I want to go back for another log every time. All the logs. I want to bury my head in the sand and drink it all until it chokes me to death.” Just talking about it tensed the muscles in arms that held her. He wanted it now more than before having lived through denial of its pleasure.

“If I lose focus just for a moment, or get distracted, or forget who I am while I use it, then it will obliterate me. Yet every single second is a conscious choice whether I want to let it or not. It’s better than any drug, and pure agony at the same time.”

He put a hand to his forehead, rubbing at the line of hair disheveled by dried out sweat and the pull of her hands. When the power was gone, he was in a state of panic that it would never return. That he’d never know again that sense of balanced on a wire strung between the cliffs. “What I can do with it, I could tear down a building if I wanted… but…” his voice drew to something of awe. Ascendancy’s power was breathtaking compared to his own depths. He was a campfire compared to an eclipse that was a thousand-fold brighter. If that man wanted, he could tear down the world and rebuild it in his image. No wonder the man was worshipped. Jay felt the pull, and such was where he laid his loyalty.

In the silence that followed, he let his hand fall aside, limp and carefree in order to study her profile. She was real. Where might they have been if not for powers, politics, wars, and revenge?

“You know I was offered a math scholarship to college. I didn’t go, obviously, to great disappointment of my parents. My mom said I should be one of those hot-shots in a suit on Wall Street, running numbers and crunching stats, making a million dollars a year. God it sounded like purgatory to me.” he laughed sadly. Obviously, things didn’t turn out that way. Then again, maybe he would have met Natalie through the forces of some alternate destiny. “I’m actually pretty damn good at cards if you ever want to play. I can think of a thing of two to bet on.” A roguish grin flashed before sinking lips to hers.

[Natalie Grey]

Gentle distraction served its purpose, and she discarded the phone and image without ceremony. Natalie didn’t want to speak about Africa, nor leave the opportunity open to grasp, but the shadow it cast was one that spread its cool wings over them both. Beyond the ghosts in her own skull there was no one else she could share such small happiness with. It did not deserve words, and it certainly wasn’t a pure thing. It was bitter and sharp and the best she could hope for. It was a blade to twist, but also cool hands on a dying brow, and she wasn’t innocent of either the weapon or the salve.

She listened quietly to his description; to its ferocity and vastness, utterly alien to her own experience. His openness soothed her in a way she didn’t pause to examine, the outpouring one she did not choose to interrupt either -- because he rarely spoke so freely. Like black and white. Light they were night and day. Her own gift fluttered like the trail of a slumbering river in comparison, beckoning the slow sink into a realm of light. She wondered briefly about the training Brandon had spoken of then, realigning it with this new context. Something she had probably been aware of for a while now, but had never thought to piece together. 

That the danger was intrinsic, not inflicted. That there was no way to teach this safely.

For a moment she almost asked more. But some secrets did not need to be shared, and she had only wanted to understand something more about him, not to pry deeper than she was welcome. His muscles corded at even the words; she could feel it where he touched her, but she didn’t flinch away even knowing his capabilities. Not because she was safe, but because she was equal.

Eventually he drifted in another direction she was reluctant to go, knowing they were likely to one day find disagreement on its shores. The trail of his words curled into the image of Nikolai Brandon. Or she imagined it did, like the tightening of chains. Jay wouldn’t ever discover her absent of challenge, and she would never apologise for it either, but it was not a battle she had any interest in fighting today. Blind devotion was not in her blood -- ironic when hers was of the Custody’s patronage, and his the convert. But it was not betrayal she contemplated. Rather, her loyalty was laid with the edge of his sword. One of those hard truths, and one she wasn’t wholly convinced wasn’t just plain weakness. It was immutable either way. And easier to face than the reason.

He looked at her like she might evaporate. It was a strange moment of unreality; like being seen truly. Such exposure ought to have made her uncomfortable, but it only made her wonder at the thoughts running through his head. The turn of conversation actually surprised her, enough that her pale eyes turned up to watch his face as he spoke. Stubble sloped his cheeks from the past day’s hard living, as far removed from Wall Street as he might conceivably be. Hands scrubbed a mess of hair. She’d probably played a part in that.

Her head tilted, an indolent smirk lazy on her lips. Not necessarily for the dissonance of two lives split down forking paths. She understood the mantle of disappointment a parent might place on the shoulders of a child, but she also believed in forging the path of one’s own even when it cost. Purgatory was right. She’d escaped her own, and had been better for it, at least for a while. A little melancholy pinched his tone, but he was entitled to that. She was content to listen.

When wicked tease lightened his tone instead, genuine laughter hummed against his kiss. That damn grin lit all sorts of feelings inside, and most of it felt like free falling. She really shouldn’t succumb, but it was a foolishness he tipped her into willingly. A line in the sand, washed clean by the tide. His rakish nature sparked her own like kindling, the repartee natural, like something rediscovered. Her fingers stroked the rough edge of his jaw. “My poker face is pretty good, Jay. Do you think you would win?” 

[Jay Carpenter]

She had a good poker face. He let her own that. Hell, how many times had he seen it in the flashes of the last year? He was sure that some kid could have his foot blown off, hobble up to Natalie, and she would just frown, pat-pat on the shoulder, and carry him off to medics without a blink. When he found her in the tunnel, she was in pure survival mode. When they reached the surface, she was more worried about everyone else than herself, dripping with blood and brutalized as she’d been. Cayli died in front of them, and the mask returned solid while Jay’s basically melted off and the bare bones of his skull were the only thing left to show the world. That was the difference between them. When her poker faced showed up, it was for endurance to survive. Jay’s poker face was a summons for self-demise.

Now wasn’t the time to think about all the horrible shit piled on the last year. This was fantasy. One he didn’t intend to leave anytime soon. ”What’s really going to piss you off is when you beat me at cards is not knowing if it was because you really won or if I let you beat me.” He grinned devilishly and buried himself in fantasy for a little while longer.

Several hours later, the light leaking around the shabby curtains dimmed toward dusk. Hunger more than anything pulled Jay from her arms. By then he had to assume that Amengual was across the border. They had no direct method to track him, so Jay was sitting against the pillows scrolling news feeds and police reports, looking for anything that might show them the direction that the country’s most dangerous drug lord was heading. He would be looking to regain power and control over what was lost, which meant one of two things. Either he would sweep into a city and leave behind a blood bath, or the previous petty fighting would suddenly disappear in the clenched fist of heightened control.

When he came to a story about the discovery of a body of a high-ranking lieutenant in the cartel, Jay started digging a little deeper. The body was found strewn in the street, clearly without worry about intervention from the authorities.

He pulled up a map of the area. He knew Amengual probably better than the man knew himself. Google maps worked well enough, switching between street and satellite view. Isolated location, close to a main road, one entrance in and out, outbuildings, and most importantly, a beautiful view. Amengual was a vain SOB.

There were several options to check out. But first, food.

[Natalie Grey]

Dusk dimmed the light to shades of gold and shadow upon the ceiling. Natalie’s pale hair fanned across the pillow, eyes half lidded; content, but not asleep. She was often quiet company, but rarely due to actual peace. Both hands rested idle on the flat of her stomach now. The skin beneath her shirt was still damp from the shower, an endeavour that had started out innocently enough and from which she’d made some small attempt to dress since, abandoned partway. Small steps bridged the distance to reality, and she was in no rush to speed the journey. It was late now anyway.

The power floated a distraction above her chest, the sorts of puzzles she’d worked on with Cayli while they were trapped in the grounds of Jensen’s estate. Occasionally she glanced at what she could see of Jay’s screen, but for now she rejected the cage of her own, though it had buzzed several times. One had had the distinct tone of her grandfather’s office, which rarely heralded good news on even the best of days. She did not need to read it to know what it likely contained, nor to understand that it meant Nikolai Brandon had grown impatient at the liberty taken with his gracious permission for this trip.

That was when she had begun weaving.

It felt like music in her head, strung together as seamless as melody, but she no longer needed the aid of physical sound to smooth her manipulation of it. Even her concentration could split, so that her thoughts wandered as the strands spun and looped to no more end than the dexterous flex of a new muscle. Right now she thought of a purgatory of her own. Of the jagged shards of each recent regret, and what she might build anew upon those bloody ruins. Because if she would not allow Jay to dash himself on the rocks of self-destruction, she could not allow herself to fall to the same luxury.

It was the closest to purpose she had felt in months.

But hope and the future were a dangerous mix, and one she eventually pulled away from. She pushed herself up as the power winked out. Reigned her thoughts, finally, to the present.

“You boasted of such a big brain in there, but guns-blazing-cowboy is the best plan you can come up with?” Her hand snaked up the back of his neck, fingers fanning through the short hair at his nape as she observed the satellite images he studied on his wallet. The tease was warm, but her tone was as arid as desert air. Not that he yet deigned to share the quiet of his thoughts, but she knew him well enough by now. A sly grin pricked her lips as she kissed the cap of his shoulder, still contemplating the map. “Though I’ll admit the hat did look good.”

In more ways than one, Natalie was her father’s daughter. No squeamishness centred her acknowledgement of Zacarías Amengual’s determined fate, nor blinkered her willingness to assist. She was no soldier. But she’d never made claims to the innocence often assumed of her narrow shoulders, and she did not think Jay saw that any longer. Not that it necessarily meant he wasn’t intending to try and protect her from the brunt of this recklessness (and it was most assuredly that), but since it was a courtesy she planned to argue in kind, she would not complain. 

She straightened enough not to be a distraction, a purposeful one at least. Her bare legs drew up and folded neatly, still a little tangled in blankets. Burnished hair made a somewhat dishevelled halo, but her expression was serious.

“I spoke to him,” she admitted of Amengual. “And I know he can’t be reasoned with.” The pale shield of her eyes dared him to question the desperation that had made that call, or even wonder at where she grasped the resources. Or when. Stillness captured her for whatever such stupidity had cost her, not least of which being the sting of pride to admit it to him now. But if she didn’t readily offer every facet of her soul, or every secret kept in that place, when she did choose to share it was with unerring honesty. Words were the weapons she wielded most often, usually with success. There was no place for them now; she could not pull the strings to coax him from hiding. And she had no other plan to get them in. No other contingency to get them out, either.

A wrench to admit, actually.

She watched him a moment longer. Grief was a tightness in her chest carefully swallowed, memory too raw to properly look back on. The pink glaze of Cayli’s eyes after that call. The fear of those last few days.

Natalie had admitted, once, to an uncertainty over whether she had caused another’s death, but she’d never contemplated it in such stark terms, even in the middle of a civil war. He wasn’t asking her to do this. She understood that. Jay’s conscience was a harder thing than her own, and she was no kind of saint. He took pains to hide it sometimes, like he suspected she might one day turn away from the horror. But while she had stayed with Cayli’s body at the facility like there was still some comfort she might offer her, she had heard the spray of bullets; knew which hand pulled the trigger, and why. She’d taken that hand soon after. And she was still here.

“Brandon won’t thank us for dispatching one of his allies without orders. Unless we give him a reason.” Her tone implied they were probably in enough trouble, but there was a morbid fleck of amusement all the same. Political ramifications could wait; sometimes it was more expedient to ask forgiveness rather than permission, and it seemed but a paltry drop in an ocean of concern. But considering how ironically it mirrored the seed for all this conflict it was an obvious thing to point out. Perhaps Jay really was unaware, but they were already on the thin end of Brandon’s patience. Such was the way her mind worked.

[Jay Carpenter]

It was a rather relaxing time, as far as studying maps of potential cartel safe houses while a beautiful woman did the same could be called relaxing. Her hair shone like the sun, and once in a while, Jay couldn’t help but rake his fingers through the silky strands. It was like catching streams of sand. He’d never get it all, but the sensation was nice.

“I have the power back, and cowboy is a good look on me.” He did miss that Stetson. It was going to be hot where they were going. A hat may be a good purchase to make along the way. Not exactly stealthy, but Jay worked the field kit enough times in his life. He didn’t like that Natalie spoke with Amengual. Nor did he want to know what the hell he had to say to her, but he’d been at the ball. Jay remembered that epiphany clear as anything. He’d seen him with Natalie. It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together and track down a public figure, which was what Natalie was. May as well have been a lady from the high court, famous and valuable for the right leverage.

Amengual could take his shot at leverage. Little would it get him. Nor would he win if pitted up to the Ascendancy. Whatever cause pulled the drug lord to Moscow would be lost against the master player. Jay had no doubt. “Ascendancy needs me as much as I need—” he didn’t finish that sentence. He needed to be a part of this as much as he needed revenge. Because what was he if not someone’s weapon? “Reason is he tried to kill one of the Dominions and threatened the Custody. That’s good enough justification. If he wants details, I’ll show him this,” he pulled at the collar of his shirt, knowing full well Natalie recently held view of the necrotic lines beneath. Plus it was a good parlor trick. Nice and shocking.

He was dressed shortly afterward, “I’m going for food across the street. Text me what you want me to bring you back,” he said. When he left, it was with a careful swing of the door and swift scan of the surroundings just in case. Finally, he rapped on the door with his knuckles. “Lock this.” He grinned and pulled it shut.

Across the street, Jay nursed a cup of black sludge otherwise known as diner coffee – best on the planet in his opinion – while waiting for food. He chose the corner of the bar to wait. Half perched on a stool and half standing ready to bolt out the door at any moment. The power was back. Natalie waited for his return. Sludge in hand. Life was a shade better than shit at the moment. Borrowed wallet in hand, he frowned and finally made himself power up the account. Three messages.

He stared at the first two. Time stamp was recent. A few hours apart. A pit formed in his stomach. Mom and dad. They were trying to get ahold of him despite what Jensen must have shared. A tightness curled its way into his chest. They must have found Cayli by now. Her bloodied, dirty body would be bathed and dressed for a casket. Maybe they would fix her hair the way she liked it. Or used to when she was little. She was girly. Hopefully she had something with those pink satin cushions on the inside.

Heat rimmed his eyes and he deleted both messages without responding. Meantime, he conjured up a sarcastic response to Nox, briefly wondering how the arm was blown off. The tightness in his chest was about to ease when gunshots blared from the kitchen.

He jumped to his feet, power aimed to decimate the building, when he realized the cursing of cooks yelling at each other not screams for help. Not gunshots. Just dropped pans.  He swallowed, rubbing his temple and shook his head. He was too on edge. More than he liked. Not that he liked the edge of anything, let alone walking the fine line of insanity.

“Hey, is it going to be much longer?” He asked of the waitress, a woman in her fifties with more gray in her hair than black. He tried a smile to ease the rudeness of the ask, but she just shrugged and checked the window.
“Throwing meat on the grill now. Couple more minutes, sugar,” she said.

Jay should have nodded. Thanked her. Estimated the amount of time left. Something. Instead, he just stood there. Meat on the grill. He shook his head, but the words stuck in the brain. The smell of it filled the diner, and his mouth went dry. Smoke curled on the air, but breaths came short and painful. He couldn’t breathe. It burned in the throat. He wrapped his arms around himself, palms rubbing the skin he could still smell sizzling under Placaso’s pincers.

The last thing he saw was the diner door blowing off its hinges as he ran through it. When he returned to the hotel room, he was covered in sweat, but not from exertion. Shaking wracked his whole body as he slumped to the carpet and buried his head between his knees. The door was closed and locked behind him. Meat on the grill. Meat on the grill. He wasn’t sure if he was saying it out loud, or if the thoughts in his head were for his own personal enjoyment.

Worst of all. He didn’t get the food.

[Natalie Grey]

He trusted Brandon, or maybe he needed to. She didn’t say anything else about it, though she didn’t find the conviction comfortable. Jessika Thrice’s campaign had received funding from Orion. It wasn't coincidental that their facility was in Texas so much as suspicious, which meant Natalie would wager money on Brandon’s awareness of its existence. That it had continued to exist, and meanwhile Amengual climbed the rungs to power over a new Dominance suggested its destruction might not be welcome. But those were not today’s burdens. She finished dressing and sank her time into Marcus’s app once Jay left.

When the door thrust open again it was hard enough to make her flinch. The power flared but did not unravel from her grasp as she watched it slam and bolt and Jay tumble to the floor, ready for the threat to follow even as her attention split suddenly back to him. Only his muttering filled the silent moment before she slipped from the bed, realising with a shudder that nothing else was coming. That this was a very different enemy.

“Hey,” she said softly. Her fingers flexed but it didn’t seem a good idea to reach out, even if every instinct wanted to offer that anchor. She didn’t know if the power raged beneath the shaking cage of his skin, or how he might react to whatever he mistook the touch for, but it took more self-control than she cared to admit to instead crouch before him. She shifted her weight to sit kneeling, as close as she could without touching.

“Hey,” she repeated. “It’s me. It’s me.” The same whispered words that had pulled her through the darkness of the collapsing tunnels, and still soothed sometimes in strange moments, like an echo with roots soul-deep. She hadn’t trusted it at the time, but no matter how it frayed, that connection had never snapped. She didn’t expect him to be listening; she wasn’t sure how long it would even take to recognise the cadence of her voice through the grip of his demons, but in the meantime she would sit patient as stone, witness to a pain that made her chest feel like an open wound. For as long as it took.

“There’s no one else here. Just you and me. When you look up, that’s what you’ll see. Just me, and the crappy motel room you picked in I-don’t-know-where America. Floral wallpaper, Jay. In 2046. One thousand and eight flowers, to be precise. Nine thousand and seventy…something petals. Considerably less now, I suppose, but I think you probably did them a favour.” Her words continued like that. Company in the dark, or a way back home, when he was ready to see it.

“Find five things you can see, Jay. Real things. You’ll need to look up for that.”

[Jay Carpenter]

The tricks worked. Five things he could see. Her not so subtle hint drew his gaze back to the wall, reminding him of the price of losing control. Then again, as far as shit ugly wallpaper went, it was rather cheerful. In a poison yourself kind of way. Even now there was a hint on the air of ash. Maybe melted glue and mold mixed in. He tried not to think of smells, since the last scent set off the chain of thought that led him to curling up in a ball on the floor. The other senses were a little settling, even if for their distraction. 

Sometime later, Jay was sitting exhausted against the door, just staring at the ceiling, feeling like he’d been dragged through the hell and back. Fitting, since the diner was actually somewhere he was looking forward to going. Four more things were easy enough to find. Natalie’s eyes he avoided among their number, if only to dodge the reflection of himself in her pupils. The idea that she was seeing him compromised like this made him want to go back to being walked in on with Anna Marie. At least he was getting laid at the time. Didn’t exactly finish. And he wanted to vomit as much as come, but still preferable to current circumstances.

Eventually, he nodded like some silent gesture that the worst was passed. A tired smile worked to soothe the tension slung through the air like the diner smoke that sent him here. “You know, this was really just an elaborate ploy to get you to pay for the food,” he said. Fog smudged the inside of his head as he snatched the keys.

“Maybe we’ll pass a taco truck on the way to the border,” he said. There wasn’t much to pack except what was on their backs. Besides, he was ready to get the hell out of there.

[Natalie Grey]

Natalie watched him as he slowly began to find footholds. It was a familiar journey, though not one she could help with beyond the suggestion of grounding. She doubted he craved sympathy, which was fortunate because she had none to give, but she didn’t recoil either -- the very still way her hands rested, clasped on her thighs, the only indication she gave of her own distress at seeing him like that. Jay looked everywhere but at her. For the same reason she’d slammed the door in his face back at the casino, she imagined, but awareness of his discomfort didn’t make her any more inclined to look away. He’d judged her weak then, or couldn’t bear to witness the ugly side of that pain -- or maybe he’d never even realised the dark place she’d been in then. She’d never know, and she’d never ask. She lived her life under that armour plating.

Her lips twitched for the weak joke, though it only served to remind her of the tangled mess of family and duty she was avoiding. She’d been vaguely surprised when her credit hadn’t been declined at the roadside diner, given the hefty withdrawal she’d made for Jay’s last brilliant plan. Her mother was unlikely to leave her destitute while she was outside the safety of the Custody, even as leverage to draw her home. But now there was the message from her grandfather’s office.

“Might be the best I can afford now. I highly doubt I’m my family’s favourite person at the moment.” A brow rose, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t been cut off from her family’s finances before. Better he knew it wasn’t a resource they could rely on again, though. 

There wasn’t anything to pack, just the gun and her wallet. The edge of his demons were still there; she saw it in the way he grabbed the keys, and in the way his gaze slid like the world was still slippery. He probably ought to get used to their company. She poked him in the stomach as she passed, sharp as the barbs of her humour. Or maybe just demanding that he look at her this time. “You should know your ploy failed, of course. I’m fairly sure it’s you who owes me dinner. But I’ll settle for tacos.”